Aksai Chin, Chinese (Pinyin) Aksayqin, portion of the Kashmir region, at the northernmost extent of the Indian subcontinent in south-central Asia. It constitutes nearly all the territory of the Chinese-administered sector of Kashmir that is claimed by India to be part of the Ladakh area of Jammu and Kashmir state.

Geographically, Aksai Chin is a southwestward extension of the Plateau of Tibet. The territory administered by China is situated largely in the southernmost part of the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China, with a small portion on the southeast and south sides lying within the extreme western limit of the Tibet Autonomous Region. With an average elevation of some 17,000 feet (5,180 metres), Aksai Chin consists largely of a high, isolated, inhospitable, and mostly uninhabitable plain bordered to the west and southwest by the Karakoram Range and to the north and northeast by the Kunlun Mountains. Its terrain is more rugged to the northwest, and there is internal drainage into small alkaline lakes in the east. The climate is cold and dry, with most of the little precipitation the region receives falling in the summer months of July and August.

Because of its remoteness and isolation, Aksai Chin was long an ignored corner of the subcontinent, but the Chinese built a military road through it in the 1950s in order to connect Tibet with Xinjiang. The Indian discovery of the road and objection to the Chinese presence in the sector was one of the factors leading to sharp border clashes between the two countries in 1962. At the conclusion of the conflict, China retained control of about 14,700 square miles (38,000 square km) of territory in Aksai Chin. The area remained a point of contention between the two countries.

Learn More in these related articles:

China and India, however, had not resolved a dispute over several areas of their border, most notably the section demarcating a barren plateau in Ladakh—most of which was called Aksai Chin, which was claimed by India as part of Jammu and Kashmir state but never properly surveyed—and the section bordered on the north by the McMahon Line, which stretched from Bhutan to Burma (Myanmar)...

in Kashmir

...established in Tibet and reasserted in Xinjiang, Chinese forces penetrated into the northeastern parts of Ladakh. This was done mainly because it allowed them to build a military road through the Aksai Chin plateau area (completed in 1956–57) to provide better communication between Xinjiang and western Tibet; it also gave the Chinese control of passes in the region between India and...

region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent. It is bounded by the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang to the northeast and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the east (both parts of China), by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south, by Pakistan to the west, and by Afghanistan...